this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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I don't really buy that non-epansionist requires stable-population; there's a lot of optimization potential and each one we achieve means that we can support a larger population on the same energy input. There are physical limits, sure, but it doesn't strike me that The Culture is up against them (and we are many, many orders of magnitude away; we hardly use most of the solar energy that enters the atmosphere, which is a tiny fraction of the solar output, which is a tiny fraction of what a controlled (rather than "gravitationally-organized") fusion reactor can produce on the same fuel).
I also don't buy that stable-population means involuntary death. Even once it stops being a majority position, I think you are going to have some people that opt-in to death for a variety of reasons which allows for a non-zero birth rate.
In all cases, involuntary death seems only motivated by resource limitations, so involuntary restrictions on resource usage would be preferable to involuntary death. (Those involuntary restrictions might turn into voluntary deaths, but certainly not always and likely exceedingly rarely at first.)
I don't think it would happen is "just" 400 years, but I can imagine deciding to opt-in to death "just" to allow a different, new consciousness to experience things, and that may very well be what's happening in The Culture.